


Sleep/Dreams

by paralogism



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School
Genre: Episode 9, F/M, eventual hope, hope arc spoilers, mildly depressing, still not over it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-30
Packaged: 2018-08-17 05:23:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8132102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paralogism/pseuds/paralogism
Summary: Kirigiri doesn't sleep, so she doesn't dream. Both of those things change.





	1. Sleep/Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> I swear I'm not usually this depressing. This is another thing I wrote in one go whilst procrastinating from my uni work. Kinda riffing (or ripping, either works) off some ideas in the last one.

Kyouko Kirigiri doesn’t sleep. She knows that sometimes people don’t wake up afterwards. She knows that sleep makes one incredibly vulnerable. She knows that anything could be done whilst your consciousness rests for a single moment, so she never switches off in the first place.

But even if she didn’t know those things, she still wouldn’t be able to fall asleep. She’s seen too many things which haunt her even whilst she’s awake, let alone in the dreams which are impossible for her to have. She pictures corpses – grotesque, defiled, destroyed and mutilated in every manner. She thinks of the lives which were prematurely ended, and their potential wasted. She wonders about the mistakes she might have made, and regrets the ones that she did. In other circumstances, these things might have been enough for her to despair.

But she won’t. There is always truth. Always hope. He taught her that much, and that could never change.

Kirigiri can sleep now. It’s drug induced, however. She hates the feelings of vulnerability and uncertainty that it brings. She hates knowing that someone won’t wake up afterwards. But what unsettles her most is the fact that she always sees him in the dreams she now has. Those nightmares. How he wonders just what it meant when she both betrayed and saved him before. How he never sacrificed her in the first place, and how he always believed in her. How he still does. 

She dreams of how it’s him who might not wake up afterwards. How it’s him who might become yet another corpse. These dreams disgust her far worse than her old thoughts.

She looks at her bangle for the umpteenth time. She counts the days which have passed. There’s no mistake with either.

Kirigiri lives for the hope that a certain boy gave her a few years ago. That’s why she’ll continue his hope in the only way that she can. She knows that he won’t despair at what she’s about to do. That fact makes her the tiniest bit sad; but she wouldn’t change that even if she could. That hope is what makes him _him_ , after all. She likes that about him. She loves that about him, even if she hasn’t managed to say as much. That might now become another thing that she regrets. 

Kirigiri can finally sleep properly. Though she probably won’t wake up afterwards. She hopes that her dreams will become more pleasant, at least.


	2. Hope Awakens Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kirigiri wakes up. Come on, it had to happen. (Well, I wouldn't have put it past them, actually...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hedged my bets by using the word 'probably' last time :P
> 
> Also tried to continue the theme. Tried.

Kirigiri wakes up. 

So she needed a drug to counter the other drug’s effects. She had assumed as much. Being the Ultimate Detective meant that it was easy to deduce both who had made it, and who had left it for her. It might have been improbable, but neither of them had lost hope in the face of their own despair. That would be something she would be forever grateful for.

She dreamt of him in her sleep. They were pleasant dreams, but she still never wants to fall asleep again. After all, there is always that possibility of never waking up; a possibility she came a little too close to. 

In her dreams, he told her to trust in hope. That even in the bleakest moment, there would be something to enjoy afterwards, like there always would be. 

He was right all along, and she had never doubted him. The people who rescued her; the person who revived her: all these people were touched by his hope, when they had earlier succumbed to despair. It truly was infectious, and only needed a single beacon to then radiate to others. He was that to them, to her and to so many other people. She felt a swell of pride at that fact.

And yet, even he had almost fallen to despair. Almost. Still, she knew all along that it was impossible for him to fall completely. When he looked like losing, there was always someone to save him then, just as there always was before. She knew that better than most. She had continued his hope, and he was the one who had given that to her before in the first place.

Those are his powers: unbridled optimism and unrelenting hope. They’re also things that she loves about him. She gets another chance to tell him, and she swears not to waste it. 

The first thing she wants to do after waking up is to find him. To make up for precious lost time. To tell him what he means to her before the possibility can be taken away. She runs to him.

He’s sure that this is a hallucination. Or a dream he still hasn’t woken from. He stares at her in disbelief. 

‘Kirigiri-san?’ 

She smiles. ‘I’m awake, Naegi-kun.’


End file.
